Dream Stories
by Rei Asakura
Summary: AU. Rainbow Bridge ends in a way Subaru could not have previously imagined: Seishirou and Hokuto have disappeared. Subaru is searching constantly to find them, trawling through dreams and tangling himself in something that is drawing him in. [oneshot]


**Disclaimer: **X/1999 and all attendant copyrights, et cetera, belong to CLAMP.

**Warnings: **Weird graphic moments.

**Dream Stories [one-shot**

The alarm went off and it was still dark outside. Subaru jerked awake at its high-pitched beeping, a cold sweat coalescing on his neck and forehead as he was thrown into consciousness. It took him a moment, as always, to realize where he was, and reconcile the narrow room's high ceiling and cold wooden floor boards with the apartment he still remembered. Heart pounding, he sat upright and the cool sheets slithered over him as he reached, bare-chested, to slap the alarm off. Its timer ticked as it reset itself to some random time. The absence of sound suddenly rang in his ears. Moving slowly, he leant back against the hard wooden headboard, sheets pooling in his lap. The dream was still vivid and clear in his mind's eye, superimposed over his cornea like a blurry sheet of glass. He rubbed his eyes and tried to shake the thick, sluggish sensation off, with no success. The dazed, sleepy feeling remained. He yawned and his jaw cracked indelicately.

Not that it mattered. Slipping back into sleep would be no bad thing. He had no other goals.

With a grunt, Subaru carefully extended his legs to their longest and stretched. He tended to be cautious lately about stretching; the past few times he had been struck with agonizing leg cramps. The last few times...All the times, really, had blurred together. Only a few things remained clear.

Lazily, he closed his eyes again and threw an arm over his eyes. He had no idea what time it was, but that way he could imagine it was anytime he liked. His favorite time was 3 AM: nothing happened. He liked nothing-times best, when nothing was happening and he didn't have to do anything, when the pull from the outside world was weakest. In the darkness he could quietly dive inward, eyes seeing nothing but aimless pressure patterns in orange and red and blue.

The dream had been clear and precise; that at least he couldn't fault, though the brief glimpse through someone else's eyes had failed to show him, once again, what he sought. He stared up at the plaster of the ceiling. The corners of the room were damp-looking and dimpled with what might have been water damage. It was always a little wet here, the air always thick with moisture. And it really was too cold, he decided grumpily, turning over onto his side and hugging the second pillow to his stomach.

His eyes wandered from here to there, sleepily tracing the folds in the sheer cotton sheets, rounding each gentle corner and dwelling in the shadowy valleys in between creases. The small skylight near the end of the room let in enough light to make everything seem cool and serene. There was a small rusty circle on the cloth near his left hand, where the sheet had rucked up as he tossed and turned in his sleep; seeing it, he smiled and let his fingertip hover over the spot and then come into contact with it gently. There was a hiss, as though of a flame lighting, and the memories surged and washed over him.

A nauseating mix of images passed behind his tightly closed eyes, exploding with almost painful intensity and light on his eyelids. His uncontrollable, reflexive flinch pulled his skin away from the bloody reservoir and the vision passed in an instant, like the briefly illuminating flash of a lightning bolt. Subaru grimaced and clenched his hand into a fist. It tingled fiercely. When was that from?

Awhile ago, surely. He'd stopped having nosebleeds early on- though the process of bending his mind to dream true dreams was exhausting to his body's resources, it hadn't taken him long to figure the trick to it. Hinoto would have been proud, were she alive. So the drip of his own blood was probably months old, but the fear and shock of those long-ago days was still strong enough to leave an imprint, Subaru mused...How he had changed since then. Why would he fear what he loved best?

He let the tip of his fingertip brush the textured red spot absently, letting the lightning spark of other people's consciousnesses run up his arm in a hot flash. It was alluring and almost sexual in nature. He licked his finger and then pressed the wet tip to the dot of blood, then slipped it into his mouth. He consumed himself and the dreams of others with barely even a taste of metal as the flake dissolved on his tongue.

When he had woken up on Rainbow Bridge after the confrontation with Seishirou, he had been nearly swimming in blood. It was a thick juice that had soaked into his clothing and dotted the pavement around him in irregular shapes. Waking from a sticky sleep he could not remember falling into, he had groggily spread his arms, feeling it soak into his sleeves, before realizing that Seishirou was gone. And he had no idea where. The ruined bridge was an empty expanse of ruin, with only himself and a pool of blood with no body. He was completely alone and his attempt had failed. The thought had caused a sharp almost-pain in the top of his skull, spreading in a slowly growing ache until he folded in on himself on the rubble-strewn bridge in agony, clutching his waist in a panic. Seishirou was gone. And everything was different.

Hokuto had been missing from her hospital room too, when he had finally risen from the bridge, a garish lipstick pentagram the only trace she'd left behind.

They had left him together, he was sure. They had left him, poor little Subaru, all alone in the city, all alone in his apartment. He had imagined them mocking him, laughing at him, wondering incredulously at his selfishness and blindness. It had all been a lie after all-- Seishirou had deliberately failed to kill Hokuto on purpose, his hand had slipped into her chest calculatedly off the mark...How else could she have disappeared, woken from her long, restless recuperation? Where could she have gone, if not with him? The coincidence was too much to mean anything else.

They had been waiting for each other, a thought that led to an endless chain of more thoughts and recriminations, of horrified realizations. He could only think dazedly of Seishirou's broad palms caressing Hokuto's sharp collarbones, so like his, sliding over her curved hips, embracing and engulfing her femininity in an ecstasy of knowing that Subaru could never provide. Hokuto, with a sharp smile and moments of trembling tenderness that Subaru, shaking behind an innocent facade, could never match. Hokuto was honest, and intrinsically Subaru was a liar.

He was weak, even physically: thin, underfed, with vision that seemed to be weakening, as though a white cloud was settling over the shards of his glass-green eyes.

But they still must have thought enough of him to leave him alive, a choice that was a challenge. He had wanted nothing more than to die, heart and soul, and they had forced him to exist without either of them. This was Hokuto throwing everything back in his face for one last time, a contemptuous trial...

They had vanished seamlessly.

The alarm was preset and there was no such thing as wasted, pointless sleep, no such thing as uninterrupted sleep, no sleep without a search for those who had abandoned him.

-----

The alarm went off and his heart slammed in his chest. A strangled noise jerked itself out of his mouth and he covered his mouth with his palm, feeling the imprint of his teeth. The skin of his shoulders burned. With a shudder, he reached up to finger his left eye. He could still feel the thin pressure of a knife lifting up the skin on his back, the gelid softness of a ruined eye in a chipped socket, the private wetness of a mouth filled with blood.

The alarm went off and he lifted the plastic bag of groceries onto the kitchen counter before starting supper. The carrots could be cut into small sticks for Masao and Fujiko's lunches and he would slice the ginger, scallions, garlic, and onions for the filled dumplings tonight. The problem was that there wasn't any time-

The alarm went off and he pushed the warm cat off his lap, grimacing at a spot of drool on his neatly pressed black woolen slacks. His clothing was covered with small gray hairs.

The alarm went off and he eased his feet out of the tight shoes he had been wearing all day. Hopefully they would break in soon...The customers didn't like seeing the girls limp.

The alarm went off and realized he'd left his cellphone on the D train. Shit.

The alarm went off and he bundled clothes into a washing machine, lips clamped tight shut. Behind him his husband snored in the armchair, kicking over a half-full can of beer.

The alarm went off and he knew she was never coming back.

The alarm went off and he put his scissors down and held up the mirror for the cranky woman from Hong Kong to inspect her newly shorn head. She stared blankly at him and pressed a few bills into his hand as though she was putting coins into a machine. Her lipstick looked as though it was made of molten copper.

The alarm went off and he gladly shed his funeral kimono for some slippers and a housecoat. Now that the old woman was dead he could afford to pay off more of his mortgage principal and a tutor for Shota's slipping math grades. He'd never liked Etsuko's nagging old mother anyway. Let her cry into their son's sack lunches if she wanted, but he had no regrets...

The alarm went off and he hastily spread a blanket beneath some trees in Ueno Park.

The alarm went off and he recalled a time in Paris, when he had proposed to her underneath the Eiffel Tower. She'd regretfully shaken her head, brown hair rippling in the wind. He had tried to crack the fourteen-karat diamond from the ring underneath his foot.

The alarm went off and he smiled, thankful for people like him...

The alarm went off and he couldn't remember a word of English. The blank test lay in front of him like a nightmare. The pencil slipped between his nerveless fingers and clattered on the tile floor. Hair drifted in front of his face like a dull cloud and he wished he'd cut it like his father had told him.

The alarm went off...

Giddy, Subaru opened his eyes to weak sunshine spilling over his bony legs. He wondered at it: when was the last time he had awoken in sunshine? It felt totally new. Weakly, he stretched his fingers into it, wishing it was tangible. He wiggled his fingers in it, feeling a faint warmth, remembering a dream he'd had about a beach and mermaids...

She had been laughing and splashing in the water, pale skin glowing like diamonds. The waves played over her and she played in the waves, totally in sync with this new habitat, the graceful curve of her arms reminiscent of sea foam. That same beautiful flow she later echoed in lush falls of lace, framing her delicate wrists like ice...

Not really a mermaid, of course. Just his fishlike sister, slipping in and out of his solitary life like a bright shadow...In and out...away she went, like a balloon. But that was alright.

Formerly, he had been too trapped by responsibility to dream. Subaru's hazy adolescence had been painful and sharp, full of mistakes and embarrassment. Now everything was smooth and clear, beautiful, like an endless vision.

If Hokuto was a mermaid, Seishirou was the beach, long, lazy dun curves with sharp drop-offs, heat and moisture waiting beneath a soft, crumbling exterior. His presence was entirely too big to be understood; he was all-encompassing in his arrogance and potential for violence, his twisted possessiveness...Framed against the sky, he was a beautiful picture that never went away. Subaru belonged in that picture. He was the ocean, stretching calm and cool forever onwards, shallow and untouched, lying against the sand with mermaids ripping in and out of him like ivory, dragging fingers of foam over and over against the sand, leaving no impression...He would give and take and dream forever.

In his dreams-- his own dreams and not someone else's-- they all lived together peacefully, unrealistically, in their old apartment with the black-and-white checkered floor and big windows. When he found them, they could all sleep together in a big bed, and someone would watch over him while he dreamed. They would love him again, because he would have proved himself in finding them. They would see that he, too, possessed fortitude, holding himself together in the onslaught of illusory fragments of dreams and the deluge of humanity's pithy aspirations. And with them to anchor him, those dazzling trips into the outer reaches of sanity would not be so visceral, so gripping. He could lose the feeling of loss, and his memory would be clearer. His sense of self would be more defined...

Oh, how he dreamed of that time in the future. His bright, hopeful visions swirled away from him in patches, flecks joining an eternal miasma that streamed into another plane of consciousness. A sweet, golden haze of bliss drifted over him, and Subaru smiled in anticipation. Distorted expectation settled over him, and he flipped back over on his back, coiling his slim limbs like the white branches of an uplifted birch.

His eyelids drifted shut, eyelashes casting thin, tangled shadows on his sunken cheeks. He slept, and dreamt. Oh, how he dreamed...

He dreamed.

**AN:** Uh, so, this is really about two steps removed from what I should theoretically be doing (finishing my chaptered fic, ATW, for those of you that know it). This whole fic is sort of a whim, really, because I started it to distract myself from this other massive fic I'm doing, tentatively titled Inheritance in Winter. 'Inheritance' is sort of almost done at about 36K. It will probably finish at over 40K. And Inheritance was started to distract me from ATW. I'm so productive!

Anyway, I sort of spoiled myself in this fic, letting myself use a lot of images and tangled-up sentences with little to no action or dialogue, my least favorite things. I hope you've enjoyed it anyway, though, and that my idea comes across clearly enough! **Please leave a review, because I love them and I'd like to hear your thoughts/opinions/suggestions.**

T**hanks **to 0ri, who planted the idea of a Hokuto/Seishirou pairing in my head. I didn't really get into it much, but it's an important idea behind the main storyline...


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